Portia Zvavahera: When paintings are dreams

Portia Zvavahera, the artist, has quickly reached the peaks of international stardom. Born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1985 where she went to school and where she lives with her husband and three children, she creates powerful, evocative, layered paintings enriched with decorative, hand-drawn patterns and inspired by local street fashion, printed to resemble textile designs or the textures of animal skins.

Woman and child figures dominate the canvas — reflections perhaps of the early phases of motherhood. Each composition is unique, with exaggerated limbs, daubed in reds, purples, greens and ochres and recently bright oranges and yellows. Rich textured areas contrast with surfaces untouched by the paintbrush, exposing the white acrylic primer. These unelaborated areas allow the paintings to breathe and to focus attention on the large dreamy, ghostly figures and shapes.

Zvavahera has another gift; she remembers her dreams and translates these onto canvas. Her dreams are often struggles of good over bad, of foretelling, of demonic horned creatures and of comforting elements from nature. Each painting is a prayer, a meditation, a battle.

Riason Naidoo spoke to her about her solo exhibition Pane Rima Rakakomba (There’s too much Darkness) that was on at Stevenson, Cape Town earlier this year.

You got into art by chance in form 1 (grade 8). Since other courses such as computers and home economics were full, art was your third choice. Do you see this as divine intervention?

Definitely. We all wanted to cook in home economics because afterwards you got to eat what you cooked. This was practical and those classes filled up. Art class was serious — you had to draw and were judged on your drawings.   

Speaking about your art training at the B.A.T. Visual Arts Studio under the National Gallery of Zimbabwe and afterwards at Harare Polytechnic College, you refer to one of your lecturers who was influential in your work and strict about the standards he demanded.

Yes, Chikonzero Chazunguza. At art school we were doing everything: ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, painting. He once told us we needed to combine two techniques in one artwork. I enjoyed painting and printmaking so I combined these two, which set me on my artistic course. If there was a drop of paint on your print he'd say, 'This is a reject!' and ask you to do it again. If you made a good artwork he wanted to see if you could do it again. Sometimes in art you do something good by mistake and you can’t repeat it. He wanted us to be ourselves. As artists, there are always other artists who inspire you. He didn't encourage that. He wanted us to find our own way and we started to find our own signatures. 

Which artists do you admire, that influenced you?

Thomas Kamungwana and Richard Witikani, and Charles Kamangwana, who was into spiritual paintings. When I started printmaking and painting I loved flowers. I used them decoratively. My boyfriend (now husband) bought me flowers. I kept them in my studio and sketched them, combining them into my printmaking and painting. When my work was shown into the world, people compared it to Gustav Klimt's work but I didn't see the resemblance.

There was a special pairing of your artworks and those of Klimt in an exhibition at De 11 Lijnen in Oudenburg, Belgium in 2019. What did you think about seeing your art in this context?

It was a great opportunity and honour to have my work in the same space with Klimt's.

In your paintings, the woman figure is consistent and central. Why?

We are Christians and believe in future telling and prophecy. When I talk about dreams I’m talking about my experience and the people around me. I'm talking about myself. That's why there's always a woman figure in my paintings. My grandmother told us that dreams guide us. If it's a bad dream, you pray that it doesn’t happen. If it's a good dream, you pray that it comes true. Dreams are communication between God and people. In Christianity there are many false prophets, but your dreams don't lie to you.

You say that you're trying to depict feelings in your art. So there are the dreams, the paintings and feelings?

I work with emotions. When I paint, I take myself back to my dream and the feeling I had while in the dream; whether it was happy or sad. I try to represent it on canvas. When we talk about love, we talk about feelings. When someone says, I love you, that's a feeling. This is how I work.

You were selected for the Zimbabwe pavilion at the Venice Biennale a few years ago. What was that like?

I was scared. I remember running away from people who wanted to talk to me. At 28, I didn’t have the confidence to talk about what I was doing in my work.

Last year you were selected for The Milk of Dreams curated by Cecilia Alemani the main exhibition at the Biennale. What was it like retuning to Venice years later?

A dream come true. In 2013 I asked myself how one gets selected to be in the main exhibition? It was an honour to be shown with other great artists. It builds confidence. People recognise your work there. I learnt that I needed to be true to myself, to be me and say what I feel about my work, to inspire people.

What about your experience in India? 

I was at an artist residency in Bangalore [No.1 Shanti Road Studio Gallery] for two months. Worshipping animals isn't something you see in Zimbabwe. In India, beliefs aren't hidden. Worshipping cows in Shona culture is something we hear about of the past. It was like seeing Zimbabwean culture in India. When I dream about a cow it's not a good sign. In India cows are gods. It raised a lot of questions for me. Who am I and what do I believe in? I went to the Ganges River where people pray and do rituals in the river. I came home to Zimbabwe and realised that what was done in India was done at home ... but in a different place, in a different way and with different people. India made me realise that we're all the same. People are choose a religion or god that's best for them.

Plans for the future?

I'm doing an exhibition at the Vatican Library [in Vatican City, Italy] next year and I have a museum show coming up at Kettle's Yard — the University of Cambridge's modern and contemporary art gallery.

* Naidoo is a curator, writer, researcher and artist. He was director of the South African National Gallery (2009-2015) and director of the South Africa-Mali Project: Timbuktu Manusc